Kabul’s loss is Moscow’s gain

From European Voice's Entre-Nous column

2/13/13, 8:20 PM CET

Updated 4/23/14, 9:24 PM CET

Vygaudas Ušackas is named as the next head of the EU’s delegation in Moscow.

Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s high representative for foreign and security policy, has risked Dalia Grybauskaite’s scorn (never knowingly rationed) by naming Vygaudas Ušackas as the next head of the EU’s delegation in Moscow.

Ušackas is currently the head of the EU’s head of delegation in Kabul and Ashton’s special representative to Afghanistan. In 2010 he was Lithuania’s foreign minister, but was forced to resign when Grybauskaite said she did not have confidence in him. (His mistake had been to play down the existence of detention centres for the CIA on Lithuanian soil.)

Ušackas will take up his post in Moscow when his credentials have been accepted by Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, and a successor has been found for his post in Kabul.

Putin might yet take exception to a Lithuanian heading the EU’s Moscow delegation and the Kabul appointment is tricky, so he will have plenty of time to pack.